The new story of "Shanzhai" mobile phones

Write in front of the words: If you are the impression of mobile phones in the MTK era, then you are a Altman. In the new era, "shanzhai" mobile phones have been fully migrated to the Android platform, and began to use electricity and 360 channels to promote their brand. Millet, hammer can do, experienced mobile phone operators have what not?

"Everyone is out to do brand mobile phones, now, there are almost 1000 mobile phone brands." Everyone's account is very simple: each Taiwan to make 100, sell 100,000 units, is 10 million profit, or walk volume, each to make 10 dollars, 300,000 is 3 million profit. "This passage comes from a former" cottage "mobile phone business mouth.

Android and the mature supply chain are bringing new opportunities to homegrown mobile phone makers, while electricity dealers and 360 are reducing the cost of branding and channels. Sohu It recently visited a number of emerging brands in Shenzhen mobile phone companies, hoping to tell you the new story of the handset dealers now.

Why do branded phones?

Through interviews we found that many of the emerging brand mobile phone manufacturers from the traditional mobile phone manufacturing. The impact of industrial change has made the former mobile phone manufacturers have to transform to do the brand.

Ming Ren mobile phone is one example. Ming Ren mobile phone parent company in the past mainly to do overseas functional machine OEM and ODM business, products are sold in Southeast Asia, South America, Russia, the peak of the annual shipments in 7 million. But in recent years, Southeast Asia and other regions, the proportion of smartphones and functional mobile phones change, the parent company to meet market changes, upgrade high-end intelligent machine shipments share, decided to first Test in the country, the introduction of Ming Ren mobile phone brand, it is reported that the Ming Ren mobile phone in April 2010 to obtain Mii GSM and CDMA

Ming Ren mobile phone Electric Business Division general manager Xu Kai said: "We do smart phones on the one hand, we value the development opportunities at home, on the other hand, it is hoped that the domestic smartphone mature, back to overseas markets." ”

Jingwei Mobile phone has been the earliest domestic mobile phone manufacturers to complete the solution, now also launched its own brand of smartphones, in the mobile phone field has 25 years of experience in Jingwei President Li Hailin said with the mobile phone product technology threshold of a step-by-step reduction, mobile phone manufacturers have regularly transformed into law, "in the functional machine era, we are to do the overall solution, Collect royalty fees; As technology matures, these vendors turn to selling mobile-phone motherboards; In the smartphone age, everyone is either a foundry or a brand maker. "

A turning point: electronic commerce let domestic brand mobile phone no longer "cottage"

In the domestic mobile phone manufacturing collective transformation to do the wave of brands, the electrical business has played a very large role, in addition to the brand of mobile phone manufacturers to provide a very low cost of sales channels, the electrical business in the after-sales service and establish a brand image of a huge role.

Ming Ren Mobile Marketing Center has now shifted to the electric business platform, in addition to the Beijing-East Cat Cooperation, the company also built their own sales platform. "Because face the user, the electric dealer lets homebred brand handset's marketing means cannot also no longer cottage, through the establishment of its own electric business platform, Ming Jen established their own after-sales service system," Xu Kai said, "This is not the practice of Shanzhai, our users are from Yunnan Mountain Village, but they will also be online with us to communicate product quality problems, The electric business platform gives us the opportunity to establish our own brand image. ”

As for the cottage, Xu Kai said this is only in the eyes of ordinary users understand. In fact, including the Ming Ren Many manufacturers have been through the Ministry of Industry to obtain all the qualifications, in quality, after-sale requirements and Lenovo is the same, but the enterprises in the operation of the measures and means are different

However, the number of shipments of electric dealers still cannot persuade all the emerging brand handset manufacturers, it is reported that in 2012, only 10% of China's smartphone sales from the electric dealer channel. "At the end of last year," Li Hailin said we put 1 million per month to do online promotion, but the effect is very unsatisfactory, now our strategy into the line of both online, the main line to promote the brand, although the recognition of E-commerce is a major trend, but the network marketing uncertainty let Jingwei temporarily back to the road of retail channels.

The second turning point: cooperation with Internet enterprises

Cooperation with internet companies is also the wave of the emergence of domestic brand mobile phone has a choice, which can make the rapid expansion of shanzhai phones. One of the Aliyun OS and 360 special machines is a more active Internet company.

Of course, some of the companies in the interview we found that some mobile phone manufacturers have contact with the two companies, but ultimately not to talk about cooperation, which mobile phone pricing is the biggest problem.

A mobile phone company revealed that when cooperating with 360 special machines, 360 will desperately depress your product prices, if the mobile phone companies accept, based on line on the same price principle, the traditional channel prices will be very low, traditional channels are difficult to accept, and if the line under different prices, then online channels will greatly impact the traditional channels, Traditional channels are more difficult to sell products.

Therefore, in terms of shipments, brand mobile phones often end up with traditional channels. But it is reported that 360 has recently been to mobile phone manufacturers in the yard, said the pricing power will be returned to the handset manufacturers.

For the cooperation with the Aliyun OS, most of the manufacturers have said that more, there is a main 699 to 1000 yuan smartphone manufacturers said Aliyun OS is more inclined to find products priced cheaper manufacturers to cooperate.

Although the internet for these Shanzhai phones to create the opportunity to build a bigger brand, but to create a brand image is not so easy, its main challenges are as follows:

Difficulty One: Brand marketing is difficult

Most handset manufacturers have emphasized that the company does not have the Internet gene, it is difficult to use internet marketing soar like millet.

For emerging social media marketing, a mobile phone industry said the company looked for a lot of microblogging marketing team, but most of the team said: "Micro-bo marketing to help brand exposure, but do not test KPIs (business indicators), conversion rate is very low, and direct sales linked to the list we do not answer." ”

"Mobile phones" and "domestic phone" brand negative value also to the emerging brand mobile phone companies have a great impact, the inherent thinking led to consumer users of domestic mobile phone very distrust, making these brand handset manufacturers difficult to launch high-end products.

A transformational brand of mobile phone manufacturers told a very interesting story: we have a product price of 699, but some users look at the price is so low, you will suspect that the product is not a problem ah? If you bid 999, he is not so worried.

The risk from the traditional supply chain

In addition to facing the new competitive environment, emerging brand mobile phone operators also face the risk from the industrial chain. Ming Ren's parent company has spent 5 million of dollars to buy Qualcomm's authorization, Ming Jen plans to launch a Qualcomm processor smartphone, and plans to use the phone as a 360 of the special machine to obtain visibility and sales. But on the eve of the product listing, the software bug triggered by the use of Qualcomm processors delayed Time-to-market, making the collaboration postponed.

Xu Kai said, "Qualcomm people have come, but no use, your shipments determine Qualcomm will not fully serve you." Brand handset manufacturers are very easy to fall into the hardware trap, a hardware procurement is not good, will lead to the entire product failure. But every hardware you have to go with, now quad-core mobile phone out, you do not follow, users even your products will not look. ”

Difficult point three: low profit margin can not be separated from the hardware thinking

Low profit margin is not only Lenovo, Huawei and other big manufacturers face problems, emerging brand mobile phone companies due to product homogeneity seriously, is still a big hit price war, rely on shipments to obtain profits, many emerging brand mobile phone manufacturers say that each mobile phone only 10% of the profit margin.

In the face of this situation, brand mobile phone operators are also aware of the importance of product differentiation, targeting segments and seeking hardware differentiation is the choice of these vendors.

For ROM development, app development, etc. to improve product value-added practices, emerging brand mobile phone manufacturers are mostly concerned about, but will not be involved in the short term, "This is the company after the big things to consider", a mobile phone manufacturer said, and in fact the manufacturer's hardware research and development team has dozens of people.

A way out of emerging-brand handsets: overseas markets

The one foot of the brand mobile phone is actually stepping abroad, Li Hailin told an interesting story, Jingwei a smartphone sold to Haiti, but coincided with the local tsunami, the idea that the order is gone, but did not expect to complete, and the Jingwei mobile phone because of its own flashlight function, but the big sell.

Li Hailin said overseas orders are characterized by stable demand and a higher rate of return, but domestic manufacturers like to get together, and eventually overseas orders will fall into vicious competition.

For the future of the 1000 domestic handset manufacturers, Xu Kai said it was not optimistic, most of them will be eliminated. Fortunately outside the single demand will be very large, Ming Jen on the smartphone accumulation will be released outside the list.

Clearly, the domestic smartphone market is still in the growth period, can carry a large number of domestic mobile phone brands, but just as the mobile phone in China's first popularization, the domestic mobile phone market will eventually saturation, will again toward high-end. In the interview, many mobile phone manufacturers have begun to focus on overseas markets, I believe that soon, overseas market will be home to more than 1000 mobile phone brand new destination.